“We all make mistakes,” she says, and I say nothing.
And then before I know it, we’re talking about the dreaded winter again. The cold, the wind, the snow.
It’s after the fourth game that Ingrid tells me to go. “You don’t need to stay here and keep me company,” she says while gathering the playing cards in her hands. “I’m sure you have better things to do,” though of this I’m not so sure. But I go, anyway.
I bet Ingrid has better things to do than hang out with me.
I say my goodbyes and I head out the front door, letting it slam closed. From the front porch I catch the sound of the dead bolt latching. I hurtle myself down the steps and into the middle of the street as a sedan sluggishly pulls into a parking spot before me and cuts the engine. A young lady climbs out, a cigarette pinched between her thin lips. I step around the sedan and that’s when I see the shadow of a lone figure ambling down the road. In a black-and-white checkered coat, a black beanie set on her head. Her canvas bag crisscrosses her slight body; her hands are shoved into the pockets of her pants. The ends of her hair blow in the wind.
Pearl.
She disappears into the morning air, over a single hill on the far end of Main Street—over the hill, getting consumed by the large homes and the enormous trees that fill that part of town, swallowed up and digested, so that before I know it, as I stand, feet frozen to concrete in the middle of the street, she’s no longer there.
And then I hear the squeal of a screen door and I see Dr. Giles standing outside his cottage home, watching this scene, too.
I am not alone. Dr. Giles and I, the both of us, watch as the woman goes, watch as she evanesces over the hill and into the morning’s fog.
Quinn
I call the bookshop on the ride home, apologizing effusively for the poor reception on the bus. I try hard to sound sincere. I really do. I don the kindest voice I can possibly round up, a whole mishmash of kindness, sincerity and concern like a fragrant potpourri.
The woman who answers the phone is a lady by the name of Anne, who’s uptight, high-strung and rule abiding, all attributes I gleaned the one and only time we met, when I’d come to the bookshop to keep Esther company for her thirty-minute lunch break. As I walked in the shop that day and announced the reason for my visit, Anne quickly pointed out that I was early, that although it was 12:24 and the shop was destitute, hollow and wanting for life, Esther’s lunch break didn’t begin until twelve-thirty. And then she proceeded to watch like a hawk as Esther organized books—face out and spine out—on a wooden shelf until twelve-thirty arrived and we were given permission to leave. And in that moment I decided I didn’t like Anne one bit.
So it’s quite unfortunate, really, that of all the booksellers in the shop, Anne is the one to answer my call. I tell her who I am. I try to play it cool, not letting her in on my little conundrum, the fact that it’s been thirty-six or more hours and I still don’t know where Esther is.
From the other end of the phone, there’s silence. At first I picture the old, cadaverous woman searching the bookstore for Esther, and a faint trace of hope fills me with the possibility that Esther really is there, at the bookstore, working, arranging those books face-out on the wooden shelves. At least that’s what I hope is happening in the ten or twenty seconds of dead air. But then the silence goes on so long that I’m absolutely certain we’ve managed to disconnect somehow, our conversation broken up by the faulty connection on the bus. I pull the phone from my ear and stare at the display screen, watching the seconds of the call time rise. Fifty-three, fifty-four...
She’s there. Somewhere.
“Hello?” I ask. “Anne?” I think I say it more than once. But it’s hard to hear. Around me there is noise, the diesel engine of the CTA bus, people talking inside, the honking of horns outside. It’s rush hour and there is traffic. Surprise, surprise.
“Esther was supposed to be here at three,” Anne says to me. “Do you know where she is?” she asks rather brusquely, as if I’ve pulled a fast one on her, lacking all the sincerity and effusion of my request.
I don’t bother to check my own watch, knowing good and well it’s after five o’clock. The evening commute is busy and loud. Bodies press into mine on the bus as I stand, holding on for dear life. It smells. The people smell of body odor and bad breath, evidence of a long day at work. An arm presses against me, leaving a trace of sweat on my skin.
This, of course, strikes me as odd, the fact that Esther didn’t show up at work. Esther always goes to work, even on those days she drags herself out of bed complaining that she doesn’t want to go. She still goes. She works hard; she goes out of her way to please everyone. She tries her hardest to make a good impression on her boss and her coworkers, even Anne, though I tell her that’s a waste of time. She’ll never please Anne. But still, it’s not like Esther to not show up to work, and no matter how angry I am with her over the roommate quandary—that betrayal still stings—I don’t want Esther to get in trouble or lose her job and so I decide to cover for her.
“She’s sick,” I say to Anne then. It’s the very best I can come up with on the spot. Esther would do this for me; I know that much is true. “Bronchitis,” I say, “maybe pneumonia.” And I describe in detail a croup-like cough. I tell her about the phlegm, a yellow-green, and how for over twenty-four hours now Esther has been unable to get out of bed. There is a fever. There are chills. “She was going to try and make it into work today,” I say, citing Esther’s conscientiousness and industrious nature; she was going to try to go to work despite the fever, despite the chills. “She must be feeling really lousy not to go.”
But despite all this Anne says that she should have called in sick, sure to tack on, “She seemed fine on Saturday,” as if maybe, just maybe, Esther isn’t sick at all.
“It came on very quickly,” I lie. “Knocked her out cold.”
“Well, I’ll be,” is what she says, but what she means is, You’re full of shit.
* * *
If the coffee shop has a name, I don’t know what it is. To me, it’s just the one on the corner of Clark and Berwyn. That’s what I call it. It’s a place Esther and I like to hang. To us, it doesn’t even need a name. Let’s meet at the coffee shop, we’ll say, and like magic, we both appear. That’s my boiled-down definition of best friend. You always know what the other is thinking.
Except for right now, when I have no idea what Esther is thinking.
I see her through the window of the shop before I go in, taking in her layered ginger hair, the alabaster skin. It’s evening, darker outside than it is on the inside, and so I can see right in, into the industrial designed space with its bold, unfinished look, the steel tables, the salvaged and recycled things that hang from the ceiling and walls. She sits, slouched on a bar stool at one of the wooden window counters, picking at the deckled edges of the coffee cup’s paper sleeve, staring out the window, waiting for me, and I think to myself: she’s got it all wrong. That’s not where Esther and I sit, but rather at one of the smaller, more intimate steel bistro tables near the back, beside a custom brick fireplace and the exposed brick walls. And we wait until we’ve both arrived and then we order together, the very same thing, some caffeinated concoction that we agree to while waiting in line for our turn. But this girl has gone up to the counter all on her own and ordered her drink without waiting to see what I’d have. She sat at the wrong table.
This girl is not a good match for Esther. Not at all. That’s what I decide.
I walk in and cross the room, traversing the patchy, polished concrete floors, staring down at them, in fact. I don’t look at the girl, not yet, not until I’m closer. It’s hard to look into the eyes of the person who plans to take over your life—knowingly or unknowingly. It isn’t her fault, I get that, and yet it doesn’t make me dislike her any less. I might just hate her.
I focus on my
feet instead, on the rounded toes of a pair of leather boots, as I walk.
Her light eyes move from the window to mine, and it’s then that she smiles, a pleasant smile, yes, but also one with reserve. “You’re Esther?” she asks, extending her tiny hand, and I say that I am. I’m Esther, though of course I’m not. I’m Quinn, but right now, that’s neither here nor there. I’m Esther.
Her name, she tells me, is Megan, and then, as if she doesn’t even know her own name or hasn’t quite decided on who she is, she says, “Meg.” Her handshake is lethargic to say the least. Prissy. I’m not even sure that we touch.
I don’t bother to get a coffee, knowing this will be quick. I’m not even sure why it is that I agreed to meet, but for some reason I wanted to see her with my own two eyes. She strikes me as young and naive, the kind of girl who probably has no clue how to hail a cab. The kind of girl I used to be. I slide onto a bar stool beside her and say, “You’re interested in the apartment,” and she assures me she is. She’s a recent grad, or will be come December, and looking for a new place to live. Right now she lives with her single mom out in Portage Park, but is looking for something closer to the Loop, more trendy, a younger crowd. She has a job all lined up for after graduation in the west loop. She needs an apartment close to transportation. She tells me dramatically with a flip of the ginger hair, “The commute from Portage Park would take years.”
The thing that exasperates me the most is that she sounds a lot like me, or the me I was all those months ago when I saw Esther’s other ad in the Reader, her first roommate request. My lucky break, I’d thought at the time, but now I wasn’t so sure. Now I feel like some kind of mass-produced commodity rather than someone unique. My heart breaks a little with each of Meg’s words, when she tells me her gig is in graphic design, how—as an avid environmentalist—she plans to bike to work in the summer. How the hardest part of moving away from home will be leaving her cat behind. How she loves to cook, and is a self-professed neat freak. My heart breaks not because any of these things appeals to me but because I think Esther would like Meg. I think Esther would really, truly like Meg.
But the question is this: Would she like Meg more than me?
“You’re looking for a new roommate?” asks Meg, and I nod my head, staring out the window as a sea of people walk by, commuters just stepping off the 22 bus.
“My roommate,” I tell her sadly, “is about to move out.” And then I tell her how she sometimes has trouble paying her fair share of the rent. How sometimes she shorts me on her half of the utilities, or eats my food without asking first. And it’s true; I do each and every one of these things. But that doesn’t make me a bad roommate. Or does it?
What will I do, I wonder, if Esther makes me leave?
Where is Esther, I wonder, and why won’t she come home to me so we can figure this out?
Why won’t she talk to me?
Meg asks questions about the apartment, logical questions about first and last month’s rent payment, security deposits and whether or not there’s laundry in the building. Questions I never thought to ask. But when she asks if she can see it, the apartment, I say no. Not yet, is what I say. “I’m speaking to a few other applicants first,” I lie, though I wonder, over the course of the next few hours and days, how many calls Esther’s phone will receive. One call, ten calls, twenty calls? Twenty young people wanting to chase me from my home, to take my bed, my bedroom, my best friend?
“I’ll be in touch,” I tell her, but then mumble under my breath so that she can’t hear, as I walk quickly away, out of the coffee shop and onto the city street, But I just don’t think you’d be a right fit, Meg.
Though of course she could’ve been Jane Addams or Mother Teresa or Oprah Winfrey, and I still wouldn’t have thought she was good enough for Esther, whether or not Esther brought her here because she thought I wasn’t good enough for her.
Talk about ironic.
Alex
I wander the streets, searching for Pearl.
It’s a path that takes me through the neighborhoods of town, from the stately homes where the stinking-rich people live, to the smaller, more provincial houses like mine, something just slightly above a hovel. I walk from the shores of Lake Michigan inland, where the waterfront community becomes bucolic. I pass the schools, an elementary school, a middle school and a high school, all three lined in a row, three bland, light brick buildings that have to bus kids in from surrounding towns to fill the halls. The American flag flutters before each one, beating in the wayward wind like the webbed hands of a bat’s wings. The noise is loud; not a single bat, but a colony of bats. There are kids outside, on the playground, thronged together to keep warm, gym classes in uniform running laps around the archaic high school track. A fire engine soars by, lights and sirens blasting—the town’s volunteer fire department. I stand on the side of the road and watch it go, looking for signs of smoke in the distance, its four big tires kicking gravel up along the road. I hope Pops hasn’t managed to start our own house on fire. Thankfully they head the other way of our home.
I continue on, past the old Protestant church, the old cemetery, the new cemetery, the café. I lumber beneath power lines, listening to the electricity’s buzz; I tread past farms, past desiccated stalks of corn, stripped of produce and waiting to be cut down; past livestock farms with fat cows and thin cows and everything-in-between cows. It’s Michigan, the Midwest, our town right on the rim of the Corn Belt; you don’t have to walk too far in any one direction to see a farm. I walk in circles, having nothing better to do with my day. Work would be a blessing, a lucky break. But today I don’t work.
In time I find my way to the old beachfront carousel, closed this time of year. I wonder if, perhaps, Pearl will be here. She’s not, not that I can see. But I scale the partition, anyway, and take my place on the sea serpent chariot, some kind of mythological blue creature, part dragon, part snake. The seat is hard and cold, an ornate, Victorian design, and though now it’s still and quiet, I hear the tunes of Rogers and Hammerstein playing in my mind. That and a stranded aluminum can, one that gets propelled across the asphalt parking lot by the wind, making a racket. Hard to believe one can—lifted from the jam-packed garbage bin by the deranged November air—would make so much noise. And yet it does, lurching back and forth across the lot like a ship in a sea storm.
There’s a girl who lives there at the periphery of my dreams: a cross between Leigh Forney, the girl who stole my twelve-year-old heart, and a whole assemblage of girls I think I’ve been in love with, from Hollywood starlets like Selena Gomez to the weather lady on the Kalamazoo news. She’s part of the dream, too, this composite of a girl with an oval face and fair skin and close-set hazel eyes, eyes that sit right there at the bridge of the button nose. Her hair is light brown, like caramel, and smooth; in my dreams it glides on the surface of the wind, always drifting. Her smile is wide and airy. Carefree. She doesn’t reside in the deepest stages of sleep, REM sleep, where most of my vivid nightmares exist, the reoccurring dreams where Pops drinks himself to death, or burns the house to smithereens with the both of us trapped inside. Rather, she lives in the place of light sleep, where the variance between sleep and awake is often blurred. She lives with me in the moments before I fall asleep for the night, and in those moments that I wake up, coming to, pulling myself from sleep, this ethereal figure who strokes my cheek or grazes my arm, or pulls me by the hand, whispering, Let’s go...though always—always—as I become fully roused from sleep, does she decide to leave, dematerializing before my eyes. When fully awake it’s impossible to summon her hair or her eyes or her blithe smile, though when I close my eyes I know that she’ll be there, calling me, rallying me to leave. Let’s go...
When I was twelve years old I kissed Leigh Forney for the very first time. The very first and the very last time, right here, on this sea serpent chariot. It was summer, nighttime, and the carousel was—
as it is now—quiet. The park was empty for the night. I’d carried my telescope to the park where, on the beach’s edge, we sat in the sand and stared through the eyepiece, me pointing out the Double Cluster, the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades, and she pretending to care. Or maybe she really did care. I don’t know. Leigh was a childhood friend of mine, the kind I’d played kick the can with when I was five years old. She lived just down the street in a 1950s tract home like mine. I’d lugged that bulky telescope all the way from my house—arms burning by the time I arrived—with the promise I had something to show her, something cool. Something I thought she’d enjoy. Why we didn’t just look through the telescope at home, I don’t know. I thought this would be more special. And she did, for a minute or two, she did enjoy it, and then she said, “Bet I can beat you to the carousel,” and like that, we were off and running, feet sinking in sand, through the parking lot, and over the orange partition onto the sleepy carousel. We forgot all about the telescope and the nighttime sky. We fell, laughing, onto the chariot. I’d let her win as I had so many times before when we raced from her house to mine or mine to hers.
And it was then and there that she kissed me, the stiff, wooden kiss of two twelve-year-old kids. For me, not much has changed since that day. It’s hard to get good at something when you never practice. But I’m betting Leigh has learned a thing or two over the years.
After that we sat in silence, knowing we would never go back to being friends; something had changed with that kiss. If it could even be called a kiss, the way we sat, lip to lip, for two seconds at best.
By the time we made our way back to the beach so I could retrieve my telescope, someone else was there, a handful of jocks from the middle school’s basketball team, staring through the eyepiece at a couple making out farther down the beach. I peered over my shoulder at the carousel and wondered what else they’d seen. They had names for me when I tried to repossess the telescope from their hands: loser and geek. Faggot. They stood, three feet away, making me grovel for my own telescope. They told Leigh she could do better than me, and for whatever reason she believed them, because I remember that night, walking home sad and alone with my telescope in hand, while Leigh drifted away with those boys.